Classical Mythology
HERACLES 547
- This is the cornu copiae (horn of plenty). Amalthea is the name of a goddess of Plenty
and of the goat that suckled the infant Zeus. Ovid says that the horn of Acheloiis be-
came the cornucopia when the Naiads picked it up and filled it with fruit and flow-
ers.
- Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley: Uni-
versity of California Press, 1979), p. 94.
- Xenophon, Memorabilia 2. 21-34; Cicero, De Officiis 1. 118. The parable has been very
important in Western art: see E. Panofsky, Hercules am Scheideweg (Leipzig, 1930).
- For further discussion, see L. R. Farnell, Greek Hero-Cults and Ideas of Immortality (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1921), Chapters 5-7, and G. Karl Galinsky, The Her-
akles Theme (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972). The best discussion is that of Burkert,
Structure and History. For Heracles in art, see Frank Brommer, Herakles, 2 vols. (Darm-
stadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972-1984); vol. 1 has been translated by
Shirley J. Schwarz as Heracles: The Twelve Labors of the Hero in Ancient Art and Litera-
ture (New Rochelle: Caratzas, 1984). See also Jane Henle, Greek Myths: A Vase Painter's
Notebook (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1973), pp. 231-238.
- For the different versions of her myth, see J. G. Frazer's notes on pp. 181-182 and 303
in vol. 1 of his edition of Apollodorus (Cambridge: Loeb Classical Library, Harvard
University Press, 1961 [1921]).
